The Observation Deck

Bill and Jim,

Cui bono? No cui bono here.

Matt

Matt,
Thanks for the reply. I haven't had any issue with Lakewood's board. So Jim's questions were really rhetorical then in regards to recent decisions? I am with the others and would love more clarity instead of riddles.

Matt is correct.

The School Board runs the schools.

And YOU , the voters, by the way, run the board.

Not the Unions...

Not the Confederates...

Nor anyone in-between in this (I'd think) wierd thread that we might perhaps want to call "Conspiracy meets the culture wars"...

About the only critters not mentioned here as candidates for running the schools would be little green aliens.

Back to the banjo...

Jim O'Bryan wrote:I have been working on a bunch of things, one is how and who runs Lakewood City Schools, as of late I have began to wonder who if anyone runs Lakewood Schools?

Dr. Estrop? The Board? Chaz? Outside Influences? Treasurer?

Then who runs the Library? which is part of the school system. The School Board? The Library Board? One or two rogue members? Friends? outsiders?

Is there a secret "star chamber" that we never vote on?

What do you think?

Do we really feel secure "letting the few gifted people" run it for the rest
of the unwashed huddled masses? As it was told to me.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:What I was wondering was much more mundane. Who cancels commercial art class(4 years ago) for example? Who stops 5th grade health class? Who cuts back on your journalism class? Who starts a program with Beck Center? Who decides hoe much
costs what? Who decides school boundary lines? Who really sets policy? and on and on.

Quite a change in tone from your lead off post to your last post. You come out strong with "Is there a secret star chamber". Now you want to know "who cancels commercial art class".

Are you backing down? Has the Lakewood Bildeberg Group gotten to you?

The state has the biggest say in how the schools are run. They pass laws governing almost every aspect of public education, from how many schooldays we will have to how many units of a given subject are required. The board is limited by these laws, and generally can decide how the objectives are to be achieved, but the board must comply with the state law. The state also has a lot of control with its ability to grant or withhold funding. Right now, we are wrestling with the question of how many elementary schools we should have, because the state has decided to fund one less than planned. Certainly we could finance this ourselves, but as a practical matter, we probably can't. In recent years the federal government has gotten involved, primarily by granting or withholding funds depending on whether we comply with their mandates.

So if the state and federal government have the biggest say in how the schools work, it is disingenous of the unions, the prime lobbyists in this field, to disclaim responsibility for the laws governing education. Its as though you hired someone to kill your wife, then disclaimed responsibility because the killer you hired pulled the trigger.

I know the unions always say they are acting in the interests of the students; it would be foolish of them to say anything else. But the decline in educational achievement which bothers many of us argues that their efforts have not served the students. When I hear them say that, I think of Mr. Madoff, who no doubt told his clients he was acting in their interests as he fleeced them.

Incidentally, there was an interesting article in this morning's paper. Apparently 48 states are in the process of establishing a common curriculum and standards, which will be subject to individual state adoption (rather like the Uniform Commercial Code), to try and insure that students from the various states will obtain comparable educations. One of the reasons given was that some states, in order to meet standards, had dumbed down their standard tests to the point that, say 90 percent of their students passed the state reading test, while only half of those students passed a standardized multi-state test.

Perhaps it IS the little green aliens?

WHAT decline in educational achievement?

Schools are doing well, due in no small part to the influence of caring individuals who might not be decision makers, but certainly do help to mold the future.

Great people, like the dedicated members of the teachers' associations, for example!

Seriously all, look what's really going on. There's quite an effort to demean, privatize and turn American education into some standardized for-profit business model, where outcomes of children's lives can be thrown into regimented lockstep.

Children are diverse.

Private schools for example, can be excellent places to learn, but remember that they can weed out troublemakers and keep the best of the best. Public education must serve all who enter. Ask your public-to-privatization advocate how they would address diversity?

Ask them how they would deal with differences? Ask them whether their agendas would trump individuality and compassion?

If you think public schools are expensive now, remember that if they were privatized that somewhere, a profit would also need to be found. Far too often, I would suspect that would be found on the backs of the men and women who teach.

Back to the space banjo...

WHAT decline in educational achievement?

The decline that has U.S. public schools struggling to overtake Latvia or some other country for 21st best out of 26th or whatever I have read, in overall high school achievement, especially in the important fields of math and science. Please don't make me google it, you've read the same thing, presumably....

What decline, indeed?

I do indeed read. Much.

Again comparisons can be like apples to oranges, as some nations exclude portions of their population from testing demographics.

Although I often disagree with Mr Brown he is correct about the state control of schools. Much of what local districts do comes via edicts from the state. Even now the current big controversy about closing another school is state-driven.
The state sets standards, the voters hold the purse strings. The board and the administration have a narrow area for decision making.
I think there was definitely a sea change in transparency in Lakewood schools when Dr Madak replaced the previous super. I was fine with Dr Estrops leadership but I am also glad to see Dr Madak is coming back.
Whether children in the USA are doing better or worse in math and science than those in Latvia is a completely separate topic

The fact that our scores are worse then other countries, and have seemed to decline over time, might be more then just the other countries leaving out poor testing demographics. I think if we look back in our history we will see that when we previously did nation wide testing averages we did the same. The fact that we are no longer leaving out the scores of poor scoring demographics dose not necessarily show that we are decreasing, but for the first time shows an accurate number. Something some of the other countries on the list are apparently not doing. This is not to say that we do not have our problem and we should not strive to improve ourselves, in fact it’s quite the contrary. Now that we can see the true number of our country’s achievement I think it is important for us to try and strive to improve.

As any teacher knows...

(heck, as any thinking rational human being SHOULD know)

...if you give a fair and valid test, you will get a bell curve of responses- getting about the same results as were you to throw a stack of tests down a flight of steps.

Some test papers would land on the top step, some, on the bottom, and the preponderance would end up somewhere in the middle of the flight.

Think about it.

Were you to give a test where everyone passed with an "A", people would allege the test to be too easy. Were you, on the other hand, to give a test with all "F's", the supposition would again be that the test was skewed; only this time, to be too hard.

With America's testing mania however, (and with BIG federal bucks tied into outcomes) the formula calls for continuous improvement until all pass, OR ELSE.

There has to ba a balance with all of this. The only valid testing, as far as I'm concerned, is testing that is diagnostic in character and prescriptive in application, and certainly not punitive or threatening in any way.

We need to get away from politically motivated over-testing, and back into the business of education, as far as I'm concerned.

I place little to no credence in many of the types of test scores that we are seeing these days.

Why can't the United States just adopt one of the many valid and viable European models for school?

In many European countries they separate students into different tracks at 8th grade so as to better focus their education. Seems to work well for them over there as they score way better than us. It should be seriously considered.

And Lakewood has testing mania in the worst way.

On one hand, i don't blame them because of No Child Left Behind, but on the other hand, it only makes the problems worse when you are literally teaching towards tests that have no legitimate use outside in the "real world".

What a bizarre paradox.

Thealexa,

To my recollection, and I may be wrong, the reason we do not track students by ability any more in this country is because tracking was successfully challenged in the courts as being unconstitutionally to be an unequal education. Tracking used to be quite common in this country.

Advanced classes survived that debate, but you would need to research the rationale permitted for that situation.

As for testing, I think that you and I would largely agree about that.

I'm not talking about tracking, I'm talking about a test at the 8th grade level that separates students into different schools for things like vocations. Why make a student who wants to be a car mechanic go through pre-calculus? Or a student in computers go through biology?

What the Europeans have is a largely specified school system. We have nothing near that in the US and that is largely the problem. We still hold onto the belief that every single student is qualified to be a nuclear scientist. As wonderful as that notion would be, it is very unlikely and that makes the system ineffective.

I am grateful that such decisions were not made for or by me in 8th grade.

And I do support trade directed education.